Happy 2011 New Year.
This post is based on the quote by Randy Taran. The post refers to what we pay attention to grows. This new year a resolution of mine that is occupationally based is that I will pay attention to what is working and not focus so much on what is not working. I will focus on what teachers are doing with tech that is maybe an old practice done in a new way. I will focus on growing that old practice into a new practice done in a new way.

Many of the Elementary school teachers that we work with ask us for assistance with power point or excel or word. This is what they know, but they do not know it well enough to encourage their students to create using it. They want a new way to do an old practice. I come in and show them a new way to do vocabulary or a new way to display research findings or a new way to review unit content or a new way to discuss what was read that day. New ways are the seed. It is a good seed to plant. My focus will be sowing these little seeds so that other teachers will hear, "That was so easy to do. What else can we do?"

We have to start somewhere. Teachers have a small window of time for experimentation. Most teachers have zero time for experimentation, so it takes us, as coaches, to plant that seed of technology. To take that new way of doing something familiar and saying watch...and grow this. It can be done. You can do it. Your students will help you. We will help you. Let's focus on what can be done and is being done, no matter how small a step it is. Technology is more than just a new way of doing something old. It is growing in a direction that is new: a new way of instructing and a new way of learning.